Storming the Sunflower Seeds

On a trip to Tate Modern, I witnessed an act which embodied the spirit that can drive us to break away from the restrictions people and life impose on us.

'We told him it was an intervention, he told us to go intervene with outside.' Anon Artist 2010

Visitors will no longer be allowed to walk through, play or steal one of Ai WeiWei's 100,000,000 sunflower seeds in his latest installation in the Turbine Hall.
Each seed has been individually sculpted and painted by specialists working in small-scale workshops in the Chinese city of Jingdezhen. Far from being industrially produced, they are the effort of hundreds of skilled hands.

“Although porcelain is very robust, the enthusiastic interaction of visitors has resulted in a greater than expected level of dust in the Turbine Hall,” Tate said in a statement. “Tate has been advised that this dust could be damaging to health following repeated inhalation over a long period of time. In consequence, Tate, in consultation with the artist, has decided not to allow visitors to walk across the sculpture.”

Of course many of the restrictions around us are for safety, yet this piece of work is testament to how  can make it all the way to the top of the creative ladder to the Turbine. There have however been suggestions even in staff blogs from publications such as The New Yorker, that this could have been perhaps an intentional stunt which calls to mind the occupational health hazard that workers face, namely chronic silicosis.

Ai WeiWei's beautiful sunflower seed landscape will remain baron, now sadly reflecting the many factories which are now condemned spaces. They too will be ground to dust.